Welcome to MountainViews
If you want to use the website often please enrol (quick and free) at top right.

Uploading walks and comments to the MountainViews service.

Anyone registered can upload contributions. There are three sorts:

Shared GPS Tracks - usually shows a complete walk (Also known as a route or trail)
Place Info - describes a hill, mountain, coastal feature or island.
Motley Views - forums of general interest

For Shared GPS Tracks, go to the Tracks, Walks=> Upload a Track.

For a Place or its environs the procedure is navigate to the mountain, find the box which says "Comment on xxx " and click it. (ensure your browser is not set to "block popups".) A new window should appear to the left. This has a place for you to enter the comment. After entering it, press "Add Record". If you have made a mistake you can press the "Edit" button and correct it.
Have a look around at comments that have already been entered to get an
idea about the style. The best comments generally tell the reader
something new or interesting about the mountain or places near
it. Usually they are specific about how to get to the summit or other place, for
example with grid references for starting points and outline routes. When you include grid references they will appear as a red triangle on maps.

When you have made a comment we would ask that you also "Rate
Mountain". Your score about the mountain is retained and
averaged with other users ratings. Visitors to the site can then see
at a glance an assessment of the mountain.

Where a particular mountain has many good comments, please do not
simply repeat similar opinions. However, for every mountain news is always
welcome.

There are also other forums for other matters of interest under the heading "Motley Views" There is a general forum, another for suggestions and a bibliography.
Coordinates
You may see "ITM" in places besides a pair of numbers such as 648138 733226 or 6481 7332.
ITM (Irish Transverse Mercator) is a grid reference system that the Ordnance Survey of Ireland have moved to for some purposes particularly large scale maps used for site maps and town planning. Conversions from 11 character Irish Grid references (e.g. W12800 52054) to 12 digit ITM references are reasonably accurate (within 3 metres usually). However conversions for a place described by a 7 character Irish Grid reference (e.g. W128 520) to an 8 digit reference may be out by one in the last digit of the easting or northing (for W128 530 that would be 8 or 0).

General Points

Others may choose to rate your contribution. The individual scores of many people are averaged and displayed. For mountains, the position that your
comment has is decided by the score that people have
given.

Point out safety hazards. For example if access to an area is by crossing a river that can flood and cut off return, say so.

Please be very careful not to recommend routes that are likely to
provoke access problems.

It's also good practice to suggest more than one way to attain objectives to lessen the risk that excessive trampling will occur.

MountainViews particularly welcomes contributions about the less used
areas. If you have been walking in less trodden areas please do write it up.

You are welcome to change your comments later. If you have news such as access or environmental changes please do amend your comment. If you believe someone else's comment is in error, contact MountainViews (who will try to contact the contributor).

The conditions concerning uploading GPS tracks and comments are detailed in the
section "Conditions of Use". Note that MountainViews reserves the right to alter submitted material.

Contribution Points

As a member contributes place comments, tracks etc they are awarded a certain number of "Contribution Points". Some reports show this and the score is used to determine whether the member can have access to certain facilities. The points are, as of March 2014, calculated as follows:

Place comments.
5 points per comment plus 1 point X score plus 3 points for having a photo

Short Summary entries (per person)
3 point per comment plus 1 point X score plus 1 point for having a photo

Forum comments.
3 points per comment plus 3 points for having a photo

Tracks
If rated then other users quality assessments are taken into account to a max of 3 points or up to 3 points depending on size, more formatted comments are favoured to a max of 2 points, number of pictures and whether they have captions to a max of 5 points

Bibliography entries
7 points per comment plus 4 points for having a photo

Summit or other place position amendments
4 points per entry

Place rating
2 points per rating

In the contributor's reports a further .1 point is added per login, however this is not put into the contribution points stored for each user. So it is not used for assessing whether the user can enter Short Summaries, participate in member forum etc. MountainViews may change the basis of calculation of points. This could arise for example if new features are added or old types of contribution are removed. MountainViews will strive not to cause historical scores to change significantly.